The survey, by the government's Urban Development ministry, has highlighted the failure of officials to improve basic infrastructure to keep pace with soaring population growth in the country's major cities.

It focused on 1,405 cities in 12 of India's biggest states, and discovered just over 700 had a water supply or waste management systems.

The absence of clean running water and efficient sewerage systems is a major factor in the spread of poverty-related waterborne diseases in India's major cities and increasing air pollution from the stench.

Researchers found that while half the cities were without water, four in five had water for less than five hours per day and seventy per cent households across the states had no lavatory. In Maharashtra, one of India's wealthiest states and home of the country's financial capital Mumbai, only two of 249 towns and cities had an uninterrupted water supply while most had no drainage system. Fewer than 20 had a sewage treatment works.

The IPCC technical report on climate change and water concludes that, despite global increases in rainfall, many dry regions including the Mediterranean and southern Africa will suffer badly from reduced rainfall and increased evaporation. As a result, the IPCC special report on climate change adaptation estimates that around one billion people in dry regions may face increasing water scarcity and will become an increasingly important issue for mega-cities in those regions.

For the nearly 20 percent of the world’s population lives in areas without access to fresh drinking water, getting access is a matter of life or death.

Parent created a company, Eole Water, that produces wind turbines that literally pull fresh water out of thin air. His solution, dubbed the WMS1000 uses the electricity generated from a windmill to collect and treat water without tapping into a water source such as a river, lake or well.

Eole Water is testing the invention in France and Abu Dhabi. The invention, if the company can get the economics to work, looks to be a promising solution to the water crisis.

Nearly 20 % of the world’s population live in areas without access to fresh drinking water so Parent created a company, Eole Water, that produces wind turbines that literally pull fresh water out of thin air. His solution, uses the electricity generated from a windmill to collect and treat water without tapping into a water source such as a river, lake or well.Eole Water is testing the invention in France and Abu Dhabi. The invention, if the company can get the economics to work, looks to be a promising solution to the water crisis.

Each unit can create 1,000 liters of drinking water using only moisture and powered only by wind. All existing solutions (wells, desalination, lakes/rivers pumping, etc.) only treat an existing source of water, this invention creates it. The WMS1000 can create water when there is no existing source available. That makes a difference. Our technology integrates water creation, water collection, water treatment and water local distribution. The WMS1000 can produce and distribute water everywhere.

Turning On Taps a Risky Business in Zimbabwe Water World Until the UNICEF Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programme withdrew in 2008 the situation had improved visibly, with greater numbers of people in Zimbabwe's 20 urban centres able to...

amy marangon's insight:

"Water problems are not new here: in 2008 some of my neighbours died of cholera because of these shortages but the (city) council is not doing anything to make sure that we have safe household water," according to Kwidini.

RESPONSE THAT FAILED:

In the past the problem was largely blamed on shortages of water treatment chemicals, but for nearly half a decade this excuse has been inadequate, as the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) provided these chemicals to the country's 20 urban councils free of charge.

U.N. assistance came in response to Zimbabwe's 2008 cholera epidemic that killed about 4,000 people. It was not until last April, when local authorities indicated that the situation was under control, that UNICEF discontinued its support, according to UNICEF Chief Communications Officer Micaela Marques de Sousa.

However, experts and locals agree that the current status quo might force the aid agency to rethink its position, given that access to safe water is one of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), whose 2015 target is fast approaching.

Until the UNICEF Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programme withdrew in 2008 the situation had improved visibly, with greater numbers of people in Zimbabwe's 20 urban centres able to access safe water and sanitation services.

Now it is common to see many people in urban Zimbabwe carrying buckets and walking in search of water, a sight that had hitherto been limited to rural areas.

Recent info: About half the sewage produced in the Cairo metropolitan region is dumped, untreated, into open drains that empty into the nile river; the same river that is the primary source of water for irrigation and domestic use.

"People have been complaining about companies forever, but before they did it at the water cooler or at the bar,” said Bernhard Warner, co-founder of London-based consultancy Social Media Influence. “Now they are doing it online and spreading their complaints to disparate communities.”

Nestle is not the only bottled water producer under fire. Others including Coca-Cola are also accused of undermining public water systems. Groups such as Boston-based Corporate Accountability International, a non-profit which originated in the protests against Nestle’s infant formula, have alleged for almost a decade that bottled water makers damage the environment when they extract the water, waste resources on bottles and shipping, and take what should be a common good".

Access to safe drinking water is a major issue in Jakarta, due to the poor water and sewage infrastructure about half of Jakarta’s population buy water from street vendors and more than 80% have no direct connection to a piped water system. Nestle and other companies have been accused of undermining local water systems in order to promote their beverage products.

In indonesia, the 12 500kg of raw sewage generated daily by the millions of slum dwellers in and around Jakarta is dumped into one of the nine rivers that flow into Jakarta bay.

The Beijiang Power and Desalination Plant is a 26-billion-renminbi technical marvel: an ultrahigh-temperature, coal-fired generator with state-of-the-art pollution controls, mated to advanced Israeli equipment that uses its leftover heat to distill seawater into fresh water.

The creation of the Beijiang Power and Desalination Plant, southeast of Beijing, will strengthen Chinese expertise in desalination, fine-tune the economics, help build an industrial base and, along the way, lessen a chronic water shortage in Tianjin, however it is costly and damaging to the environment.

Dodoma gets 8bn/- for water project Daily News Among others, the initiative will promote harvesting of rain water, treatment of water and water wells for water-deprived communities that are making efforts to improve sanitation and hygiene.

amy marangon's insight:

Among others, the initiative will promote harvesting of rain water, treatment of water and water wells for water deprived communities that are making an effort to improve sanitation and hygiene. It is estimated to benefit over one million residents in the Dodoma region.

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